1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates to a liquid cooling device that cools a cooling target during a printing or copying operation, and an image forming apparatus that includes the liquid cooling device.
2. Related Art
Electrophotographic image forming apparatuses such as printers, facsimile machines, and copiers, typically employ an exposure device, a development device, a fixing device and so forth to process image formation with text, symbol, and the like on a recording medium, for example, a plain sheet and an OHP (overhead projector) sheet. These devices are known to generate heat during respective processes in the image formation.
To form a good image on the recording medium, these devices are adjusted to have a preferable temperature within a given range. To address this inconvenience, the image forming apparatuses include a cooling device to cool a cooling target of any part(s) of these devices when a temperature of the part(s) of the devices increases beyond the given range.
Various types of cooling devices are employed in image forming apparatuses. For example, there are a cooling device to cool a development device, a cooling device to cool a recording medium after an image is fixed by a fixing device, and multiple cooling devices to cool multiple laser diode control substrates of an exposure device. In an image forming apparatus, for example, liquid type cooling devices are employed to respectively cool the development device and the recording medium discharged from the fixing device and air type cooling devices are employed to cool the multiple laser diode control substrates of the exposure device.